


Short as the Watch That Ends the Night

by Mithen



Category: Ian Rutledge Mysteries - Charles Todd
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Hamish McLeod, condemned to die in the morning, the night goes all too quickly.  But at least he's not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Short as the Watch That Ends the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Armistice Day.

_A thousand ages in Thy sight_  
 _Are like an evening gone;_  
 _Short as the watch that ends the night_  
 _Before the rising sun._  
 _\--Isaac Watts, "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past"_

Hamish McLeod shivered, his teeth chattering as he forced the words between his lips, forced himself to keep talking of home, of the sunlight between the trees and the fields of golden oats and the soft foggy drizzle of a fall morning, as if it could stave off the cold. As if it could stave off the dawn.

Lieutenant Rutledge sat across the table, watching him. His clear pale eyes had dark shadows under them and were rimmed red with exhaustion, and Hamish couldn't meet them for more than an instant. He remembered the fury blazing in them, the desperation. "There's no choice!" the lieutenant had screamed over the pounding guns, and God help him, Hamish had refused to obey his commanding officer. He had said he would never lead boys into death again, had raved of waste and of slaughter, and they had taken him away and put him in this cold, cold room, and Lieutenant Rutledge had gone over the top and faced death without him, and now Hamish was no longer sure whether it was conscience or cowardice that had fuelled his defiance.

He couldn't bear to look into the lieutenant's eyes, couldn't face his contempt and disdain. And so he spoke instead, spilling words like a confession, as if his love for his home could somehow justify his sins. To die a traitor and a coward, to be buried in the cold foreign clay and forgotten, loathed by all--he clenched his hands together and tried to still their trembling. He couldn't bear it, that the lieutenant's last memory of him would be of mutiny and madness, and so he spoke desperately of his boyhood, of his parents, of Fiona waiting for him at home. He shuddered and heard his teeth click together as the wind picked up; there was a distant sound of guns.

Lieutenant Rutledge stood and for a moment Hamish thought he was going to leave without a word, but instead he took off his greatcoat and put it around Hamish's thin frame. "But Lieutenant," Hamish stammered.

"I don't know where they took yours. And you need it more than I," said Rutledge wearily, and indeed, he wasn't shivering at all. Hamish suspected he was too weary to even do that any longer.

The coat still held the lieutenant's warmth within it; Hamish felt its weight on his shoulders and willed his body to stop trembling. Because if he couldn't stop, he would have to admit that it wasn't the cold wracking his body, it was--

With a desperate effort of will, he finally made the tremors in his muscles still.

He kept talking, and the hours flew by far too swiftly. There wasn't enough time, not nearly enough time to give his life to his commanding officer as he had failed to give his death, like a broken bauble. An apology of sorts.

Not enough time.

It was nearly dawn, he had done too many dawn patrols to not sense the faint lightening of the air. His last dawn. His voice faltered in its description of his favorite hymn as a child and he found himself unable to continue, staring wordlessly at the brass buttons on the lieutenant's uniform. No more words. No more time.

"I'll give you a second chance," Rutledge said. His voice was hoarse, pleading. "Go out there and tell your men you were wrong."

But it was impossible. They had all seen him break. The lieutenant had seen him--no, he couldn't bear it. Better to face death with some dignity, this time. He shook his head.

Lt. Rutledge stared at him in silence for a long moment, and Hamish forced himself to meet his eyes this time. A final penance.

And then Rutledge burst out: "How you must hate me!"

Hamish stared at him, and the steady _thud thud thud_ of the shelling was like the beating of his own heart, deafening and deadly.

"Hate?" he finally managed to say, the word foreign and clumsy on his tongue. "Hate?"

"I'm your killer, man," Rutledge said savagely, "As sure as if I'd put the gun to your head and did it myself."

Hamish could almost have laughed: how much better that would be than the shame of the firing squad! "Ian," he said, and stopped at the sound of the lieutenant's first name on his lips, the name he had never said before. Never let himself think. As if they were equals. "Ian," he repeated. As if they were friends. As if--

But it was impossible to say, impossible to even think. He couldn't bear to add to the loathing (he could not see any, but it must be there, it must be) in his commanding officer's eyes. And so:

"Don't forget me," he said. "Please don't forget me."

A knock at the door. It was time.

Hamish was distantly pleased to look down and see that his hands were steady. He went to shrug out of the coat as he stood, but the lieutenant rose and put it back around his shoulders. "Keep it," he said. And then he leaned close and said, "I swear I will not forget you, Hamish."

His voice was steady as a pledge and as soft as a kiss, and there was no contempt in it at all. Not at all.

And Hamish went out into the pale implacable dawn with that promise in his ears and Ian at his side.


End file.
